I didn’t realize this was even possible, but I recently came across properties for which opening bids had already been posted, but then less than an hour before the scheduled sale time, each sale was postponed and the previously posted opening bid was removed. Does anyone know why this would happen and how common it is? Is there any way to see when such events have occurred? I can’t see any history of changes to opening bid amounts in Foreclosure Radar.

Hi Jo,
The trustee can choose to cancel or postpone the sale even if they have released an opening bid. There could be a last minute discovery of a problem with the foreclosure processing, there could be a lawsuit filed or a BK, the list goes on and on. If this happens ForeclosureRadar will remove the opening bid because this is no longer a valid opening bid. If the sale was postponed there is no guarantee that this will be the opening bid and to leave it in place would be reporting invalid information. As the new sale date got closer it would be possible that investors would think that this opening bid applied to the current sale.

Thanks Michelle, I certainly agree that if only one value can be available for an opening bid, it should be the latest information (i.e., nothing if the prior bid is no longer valid). But it would be nice a history of updates could be seen. I assume that’s not possible currently on the web site, but is such historical information (the time and amount of each update) something you can retrieve internally fairly easily if it’s requested for a specific property?